American War Hero · World War II · Notice Nearby
No rights-safe contemporary likeness is on file. The record is the service and the writing, not an invented face.
Jearld H. Jones
December 3, 1917 – unaccounted for since May 21, 1943
Born Rushville, Pope County, Arkansas
Loss location: North Sea north of Schiermonnikoog, Netherlands (loss location)
Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army Air Forces; top turret gunner, 324th Bombardment Squadron, 91st Bombardment Group (Heavy); B-17F Flying Fortress 41-24515 (Jersey Bounce / Marie Jane), Wilhelmshaven mission, May 21, 1943
Missing in action — DPAA lists Staff Sgt. Jearld H. Jones as Unaccounted For (Non-recoverable), profile a0Jt0000000BSHAEA4 (verified 2026-09-25). Top turret gunner on B-17F 41-24515 lost May 21, 1943 on a Wilhelmshaven U-boat-yard mission; aircraft critically damaged by fighters and crashed in the North Sea; no bailouts observed; full ten-man crew lost. Memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at Netherlands American Cemetery, Margraten. Birth date and Arkansas/Arizona places from Fields of Honor case 581. Non-recoverable is an analytic category for a North Sea loss, not a recovered grave.
Jearld Henry Jones was born in Rushville, Arkansas, on December 3, 1917. Orphaned young, he and his siblings drifted west to relatives in Arizona; by the early 1940s he was farming around Mesa and working for his uncle. He volunteered for the Army of the United States in Arizona in March 1942 and crossed to England that fall with the heavy-bomb groups.
By May 1943 he was a staff sergeant in the top turret of B-17F 41-24515 — Jersey Bounce / Marie Jane — with the 324th Bombardment Squadron of the 91st Bombardment Group out of Bassingbourn. On the twenty-first they went against the submarine yards at Wilhelmshaven. German fighters tore the formation. The Fortress took fatal damage over the water and went into the North Sea north of Schiermonnikoog. No one saw a parachute. The ten-man crew did not come home.
DPAA profile a0Jt0000000BSHAEA4 still lists him Unaccounted For, analytical category Non-recoverable. He is on the Walls of the Missing at Margraten. A finding of death closed a personnel file. It did not bring a body up from that sea.
- Publication
- NN-HERO-1941-019
- Content hash
- ca5e3b6d 737ee244 563719af 7e2cb9f6 771a5453 9785ced9 528e62e2 f39a90d0
- Base anchor
- 0xa76092 4fef35ba b44a2270 8da1ec0e f1ec652d 4aa805ff 4c7b1b1a 2f2f766e 8b
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